麻豆传媒入口

It鈥檚 news that鈥檚 all too real: We鈥檙e drowning in a stream of misinformation. The problem is so acute that the World Health Organization recently declared it an infodemic鈥攁 deliberate effort to spread misinformation, resulting in polarized public debate and amplified hate speech that threatens 鈥渓ong-term prospects for advancing democracy, human rights, and social cohesion,鈥� the organization warned in a .

In classrooms across America, a generation of new readers鈥攄igital natives who spend online every day and gather information from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube鈥攁re struggling to parse fact from fiction. In a , for example, researchers gave middle school through college-age students 56 tasks鈥攔anging from evaluating the trustworthiness of a source to distinguishing the difference between a news article and an opinion column. 鈥淥verall, young people鈥檚 ability to reason about information on the internet can be summed up in one word: bleak,鈥� the researchers concluded.聽

For educators, teaching kids to be critical media consumers can feel like a daunting鈥攁nd unfair鈥攔esponsibility, given the unrelenting flow of information that kids are subjected to daily. Still, a number of states are exploring how to , and nonprofit organizations like the News Literacy Project offer 聽for educators.

A fundamental problem, says Sam Wineburg, a professor of education at Stanford and the lead researcher on the 2016 study, in an interview with 麻豆传媒入口, is that typical approaches to teaching information literacy are often outdated. In a holdover from the days of traditional print news, we often teach a vertical analysis of information: closely reading an article to look for mistakes, dubious assertions, or inconsistencies. 鈥淲e learn to think critically by paying close attention and reading thoroughly from top to bottom, thinking very carefully about what we鈥檙e reading,鈥� says Wineburg, whose body of research over the last three decades has focused on how students judge the credibility of online information.聽

But poring over a text with a fine-toothed comb from start to finish is time-consuming and inefficient, and few readers are knowledgeable enough to suss out factual errors. Instead, Wineburg offers a simple, teachable strategy, drawing from what he calls the 鈥渧irtuosos of the internet鈥�: professional fact-checkers.

In contrast to typical readers, fact-checkers move laterally rather than vertically, opening multiple browser tabs to validate claims and checking who is behind a site before continuing to read the initial page. They recognize that they鈥檙e at a disadvantage if they stay within a website, so they cross-check information across many sites to get a second鈥攐r even a third, fourth, and fifth鈥攐pinion. It鈥檚 a modern approach to identifying misinformation online that Wineburg says should be much more commonplace in schools.

Can Students Vet Information Like Experts?

In a , Wineburg and his colleagues set out to determine whether they could teach kids to read laterally鈥攍ike fact-checkers鈥攁nd whether there would be a change in student skepticism about sources.聽

Using materials they developed at the Stanford History Education Group, they asked 499 high school students to evaluate information found online. In one activity, students assessed the credibility of minimumwage.com, a 鈥渟ite purporting to offer nonpartisan information about minimum wage policy.鈥� To get full credit, the students had to avoid being deceived by the site鈥檚 superficial qualities鈥攖hat it was a dot-org, referenced scientific studies, and claimed it was staffed by professionals with advanced degrees鈥攁nd find information about the organization behind the site, any hidden motives or agendas, and any other sources that might challenge the site鈥檚 claims.聽

Half of the students were given six 50-minute lessons in lateral reading, while the other half participated in their business-as-usual government classes. After a three-month period, both groups of students were tested on their ability to assess the credibility of a site, the accuracy of the information presented, and whether or not the claims made were supported by evidence. While students in the traditional government classes saw a modest gain of 25 percent, students who were taught the lateral reading strategy nearly doubled their scores, improving their eye for unreliable information by 71 percent.

鈥淪tudents are bringing analog strategies to a medium that demands a digital way of evaluating information,鈥� Wineburg concludes. To keep up with today鈥檚 ever-changing digital landscape, we need to adapt how we teach information and media literacy in schools.

A Different Way to Navigate the Web

At the heart of lateral reading is the idea that a single source of information should always be read with a critical eye. Instead of taking an article at face value, we should take a step back, says Wineburg, and think about the information it contains as part of a broader ecosystem of both reliable and unreliable sources: Is the claim corroborated by any other sources? Are we looking at firsthand accounts, or does the information originate elsewhere? What is the site鈥檚 reputation?

can help readers quickly identify where a major publisher lies on the political divide and how accurate its reporting is鈥攆rom Slate and The New York Times to The Economist and The Wall Street Journal to Breitbart News鈥攚丑颈濒别 like PolitiFact.com, FactCheck.org, and The Washington Post Fact Checker can be used to help quickly verify a claim.聽

Developing a list of reputable sites and cultivating a skeptical mindset in students鈥攊nformation should be considered dubious until verified鈥攕hould be central to how students vet information they read online. Meanwhile, a quick scan for spelling or grammatical errors, sensational claims that sound too good to be true, and overtly political perspectives and single-source reporting, along with Google searches about the site itself, can also help students identify possible misinformation on an unknown webpage.聽

While researching, students shouldn鈥檛 spend too much time on any one site, Wineburg asserts. Unlike many readers, expert fact-checkers are adept at ignoring information while looking for answers; they almost immediately leave the site of the original claim and move laterally across the computer screen as they open new web pages. They assume that information is low-quality until fundamental questions are answered: Does a quick search on Google yield information about a website or news article that will help me gauge its trustworthiness? Have journalists investigated the site in question and uncovered a flow of funds from organizations that have a hidden agenda? Are the website鈥檚 claims confirmed by reputable sites in the cascading tabs?

Getting Started in the Classroom

Here are five tips for setting kids up to succeed at lateral reading, drawn from our own research and Wineburg鈥檚 work鈥攁nd there are more on the .

1. Guide students with probing questions. U.S. history teacher Will Colglazier, who is part of the Stanford History Education Group team, launches a by asking his students to answer three key questions when assessing the credibility of a website:

• Who is behind the information? Students should investigate the people making the claims and how their motives could influence what is presented and suppressed.
• What is the actual evidence for the claim? Claims often appear to be scientific or based on evidence; when students gather and assess the actual evidence, does it still add up?
• What do other sources say? Students should corroborate claims and verify information with other sources, such as experts, scholarly journals, and reputable news sites.

2. It鈥檚 OK to use Wikipedia. Students are often told, 鈥淒on鈥檛 go to Wikipedia,鈥� says Wineburg. Yet 鈥渙ne of the first things fact-checkers did was go to Wikipedia and use it as a jumping-off point, as a portal to more authoritative sources,鈥� he says. In fact, reading a Wikipedia article 鈥渃an provide students with an opportunity to learn about peer review, sourcing, footnotes, and internet research,鈥� explains Benjamin Barbour, a high school history and government teacher in Fairview, Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, it鈥檚 a myth that anyone can change what鈥檚 written on a Wikipedia page. Try changing Donald Trump鈥檚 Wikipedia page, says Wineburg. 鈥淯nless you are the highest-badge Wikipedian, you鈥檙e not going to be able to touch that page.鈥澛�

3. Work on productive skimming. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 have to read everything on a particular website to make a decision,鈥� says Wineburg. It鈥檚 difficult, if not impossible, to spot misinformation on the basis of the original source鈥檚 claim. Instead, get a quick sense of the content by scanning the page, and then do a Google search and open more sites to see if the information is supported by other sources. Come back to your original page for deeper reading after assessing the claims more broadly.

4. Don鈥檛 be fooled by appearances. Twenty years ago, creating a professional website was costly; a poorly designed site peppered with spelling errors, clip art, and inconsistent formatting was often a red flag. Today, however, slick websites are more attainable and affordable. Just because a site looks professional doesn鈥檛 mean it鈥檚 trustworthy.聽

Similarly, it鈥檚 easier than ever to purchase .org and .com domain names, and using those suffixes to determine a site鈥檚 reliability is a mistake that students often make.

5. Create a list of go-to sources. Engage in a conversation with students about how to develop a roster of reputable, go-to sites鈥攖rusted resources from across the political spectrum from The Wall Street Journal to The New York Times, government agencies such as the FDA and the EPA, and independent research organizations like the National Science Foundation and NASA, for example. As part of the conversation, talk about bad-faith outliers on both sides of the political divide, like Daily Kos and Breitbart News, and explain why relying on reputable, well-established publications is a critical part of smart media literacy.